Truth, fuch as is neceffary to the regulation of life, is always found where it is honeftly fought. 'Change of place is no natural caufe of the increase of piety, for it inevitably produces diffipation of mind. Yet, fince men go every day to view the fields where great actions have been performed, and return with stronger impreffions of the event, curiofity of the fame kind may naturally difpofe us to view that country whence our religion had its beginning; and I believe no man furveys thofe awful fcenes without fome confirmation of holy refolutions. That the Supreme Being may be more easily • propitiated in one place than in another, is the dream of idle fuperftition; but that fome places may operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner, is an opinion which hourly experience will justify. He who fuppofes that his vices may be more fuccessfully combated in Paleftine, will, perhaps, find himself mistaken, yet he may go thither without folly: he who thinks they will be more freely pardoned, difhonours at once his reafon ⚫ and religion.'

In a following chapter the danger of infanity is the fubject of debate; and it cannot but excite the pity of all those who gratefully accept and enjoy Johnson's endeavours to reform and inftruct, to reflect that the peril he defcribes he believed impending over him. That he was confcious of fuperior talents will furely not be imputed to vanity: how deeply then must he have been depreffed by the conftant fear that in one moment he might and probably would be, not only deprived of his diflinguifhed endowments, but reduced to a state little preferable, in as much as refpects

this world, to that of brutes! He has traced the mifery of infanity from its caufe to its effect, and feems to afcribe it to indulgence of imagination: he ftyles it one of the dangers of folitude; and perhaps to this dread and this opinion was his uncommon love of fo ciety to be attributed.

His fuperftitious ideas of the state of departed fouls, and belief in fupernatural agency, were produced by a mental disease, as impoffible to be fhaken off as corporal pain. What it has pleafed Omnipotence to inflict, we need never feek to excufe; but he has provided against the cavils of thofe who cannot comprehend how a wife can ever appear a weak man, by remarking, that there is a natural affinity between melancholy and fuperftition.

In characterifing this performance, it cannot be faid, that it vindicates the ways of God to man. It is a general fatire, reprefenting mankind as eagerly purfuing what experience fhould have taught them they can never obtain: it expofes the weakneffes even of their laudable affections and propenfities, and it refolves the mightieft as well as the moft trivial of their labours into folly.

I wish I were not warranted in faying, that this elegant work is rendered, by its most obvious moral, of little benefit to the reader. We would not, indeed, wish to fee the rifing generation fo unprofita bly employed as the prince of Abyffinia; but it is equally impolitic to reprefs all hope, and he who fhould quit his father's houfe in fearch of a profeffion, and return unprovided, because he could not find any man pleafed with his own, would need a better juftification than that Johnson, after fpeculatively

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tively furveying various modes of life, had judged happiness unattainable, and choice useless.

But let those, who, reading Raffelas in the spring of life, are captivated by its author's eloquence, and convinced by his perfpicacious wisdom that human life and hopes are fuch as he has depicted them, remember that he faw through the medium of adver

ty. The concurrent teftimony of ages has, it is too true, proved, that there is no fuch thing as worldly felicity; but it has never been proved, that, therefore we are miferable. Thofe who look only here for happiness, have ever been and ever will be difappointed it is not change of place, nor even the unbounded gratification of their wishes, that can relieve them; but if they bend their attention towards the attainment of that felicity we are graciously promised, they will find no fuch vacuum as diftreffed Raffelas : the discharge of religious and focial duties will afford their faculties the occupation he wanted, and the wellfounded expectation of future reward will at once ftimulate and fupport them.

The tale of Raffelas was written to answer a preffing neceffity, and was fo concluded as to admit of a continuation; and, in fact, Johnson had meditated a fecond part, in which he meant to marry his hero, and place him in a state of permanent felicity: but it fared with this refolution as it did with that of Dr. Young, who, in his eftimate of human life, promifed," as he had given the dark, fo, in a future publication, he would difplay the bright side of his subject; he never did it, for he had found out that it had no bright fide, and Johnfon had made much the fame difcovery, and that in this ftate of our exiftence all

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our enjoyments are fugacious, and permanent felicity unattainable.

Soon after the publication of Raffelas, and while he continued to write the Idler, Johnson was tempted to engage in a controverfy on a fubject with which, in the course of his ftudies, he had acquired but little knowledge, namely, the comparative ftrength of arches of different forms; the occafion of it was, that after the paffing of the act of parliament for building Black-Friars bridge, a variety of defigns for it were tendered to the commiffioners, who, after due confideration, reduced them to three. In two of thefe defigns, the conftruction of the arches was femicircular; in the third, exhibited by Mr. Mylne a Scotfman, it was elliptical.

Whether Johnson thought that the author of this laft proposal, as being a native of North Britain, merited to be treated as an intruder, or that he was induced by better motives to oppofe his fcheme, cannot be determined: this, at leaft, is certain, that he took up the refolution before he was qualified to debate the queftion, for I have it from undoubted authority, that, in order thereto, he procured from a perfon eminently skilled in mathematics and the principles of architecture, anfwers to a firing of questions drawn up by himfelf, touching the comparative ftrength of femicircular and elliptical arches. These I myself have feen, and the answers determine in fayour of the femicircular.

If the former of the confiderations above fuggefted, was at any time, or in any degree, Johnfon's motive for oppofing Mr. Mylne, he ought to have reflected, that, at a period when we had no better archi

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tects than Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor *, James and Kent among us, Campbell and Gibbs, both Scotfmen, had adorned this country with fome flately and elegant edifices; and if the latter was his inducement, he fhould have reflected, that his arguments were not his own, and fo far as regards fymmetry and correfpondence of parts, how little he was qualified to judge of fymmetry and the correfpondence of parts, whofe eye was never capable of comprehending the dome of St. Paul's cathedral, or the towers of Westminster-abbey. However, armed as he is above faid to have been, with reafons against Mr. Mylne's defign, he began an attack on it in a letter to the publisher of the Daily Gazetteer, inferted in that paper for the first day of December, 1759; and continued it in the fucceeding papers of the eighth

Vanbrugh and Hawkfmoor had fuch ideas of beauty and harmony as have no archetypes in the material world: the latter, in an evil hour, was employed by the commiffioners for building fifty new churches; as alío by a parifh in the city, St. Mary Woolnoth, in the re-edification of an old one, and has left his mark behind him in feveral parts of this kingdom.

James and Kent were mere decorators, and could do little more than defign a faloon, a gallery, or a fcreen. Kent pretended to hiftory-painting, but was, after painting an altar-piece or two, become fo confcious of his deficiency, that he ftrove to render painted ftair-cafes unfashionable, by dividing them into compart ments of stucco, ornamented with groups of fruit and flowers, with other plastic ornaments. He had, nevertheless, a fine tafte in gardening, and introduced that flyle, which now prevails in this kingdom, and ferves for a model to all Europe.

Campbell and Gibbs were both men of genius; the former defigned the best houfe in this kingdom, that at Wansted in Effex, built by the earl of Castlemain; the latter, St. Martin's church, and other edifices that are an honour to his memory,

and